Hand To Mouth

Hand To Mouth

Adult nonfiction
"That's $628 per month, or $314 per paycheck for everything
else--food, clothes, car payments, gas. If you're lucky, you get all
that money to live on. But who's lucky all of the time, or even most
of the time? Maybe you get sick and lose your job. Even if you land
a new job, that measly $314 is all you've got to last you until your
paychecks at the new place start up. Or what if, God forbid, the car
breaks down or you break a bone?"
Much of America believes too much in the Horatio Alger story.
Any little boy (these days--or girl) can become president or CEO or
athlete or at least hold down a white color job if he/she/they
perseveres. Those poor people have only themselves to blame. If they
worked/saved/didn't smoke... Sadly some of the true believers are in
gubmint. There's an orgy of "tough love" going on--cutting benefit
elegibility so slackers will get off their tushes and get a job. (I
would seriously love to see Governor LePage try to pay for food,
clothes, electricity, gas...everything but housing on $628 a month.)
In Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America, Linda Tirado
shows how those beliefs are just so much sanctimonious crap. She's
lived the nightmare. She shares it with us in a no-holds-barred
narrative that should be required reading for all politicians and
health and human services workers.
Minimum wage full time jobs don't pay enough. Only, in order to
avoid giving benefits, employers are increasingly turning to part
timers. To further cut expenditures they base hours on how busy the
place is, post schedules mere days in advance, call in or send home at
the last minute, and require workers who may get 30 or 10 hours a week
to not get a second job.
When my daughter worked retail in college one Labor Day she
called the night before to say she couldn't make a family gathering.
She'd been called in to work. Then she showed up saying when she'd
been there an hour management decided the place wasn't as busy as they
anticipated and sent her home. What if she'd had young children
requiring a babysitter?
White collar jobs are not in the picture for many of the poor.
They often lack higher education and connections. With dentistry
being so darn expensive, tooth loss can stand in the way of any job
dealing with the public. Even the kind of clothes they would need are
out of the price range of people always in danger of eviction or
vehicle breakdown.
The kinds of miseries the poor endure on a regular basis are
spelled out in vivid detail.
"Roaches are nearly impossible to kill without repeated
professional extermination treatments, and those aren't free. They
live in walls and under woodwork; if there is a single crack in your
apartment they can come in at will..."
Sadly even working diligently, parents are increasingly unable
to help their beloved children achieve a better life as past
generations did. To me the saddest passage in the book is when Tirado
says,
"...I'm not preparing our kids for a gentle world, full of
interesting and stimulating experiences. I'm getting them ready to
keep their damn mouths shut while some idiot tells them what to do.
I'm preparing them to keep a sense of self when they can't define
themselves by their work because the likliest scenario is that (unlike
doctors and lawyers and bankers) they will not want to. I'm getting
them ready to scrap and hustle and pursue happiness despite the
struggle."
Is this what you want for yourself, you family, or your
country? Read the book and find out.
On a personal note, I woke up to a glorious day with temps expected to
hit 80. Just what we need for Maine Day, the Day UMaine students do
services projects on campus and in the community. I'm going to be
gardening up to Wilson Center. The reward is a humungous cook out in
the steam plant parking lot with music and other amusements.
We also had great weather Monday for the carnival put on by Active
Minds. We had games, popcorn, snow cones, the ice cream truck, free
Polaroid pictures, and five tables. I did the healthy memes table
which was quite popular. A lot of students really enjoyed our little
low budget, high excitement carnival. The only glitch was gusts of
wind that sometimes turned memes into kites. Fortunately people
enjoyed chasing them. It was the kind of event that made people feel
happy to be alive.
Monday night I tried an experiment with my carnations from Out of the
Darkness. I put a few drops of food coloring in the water. Tuesday
when I got up they were edged with delicate pink.
A great big shout out goes out to all who participated in the carnival
and will turn out for Maine Day.
jules hathaway



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